God’s Country – Percival Everett

I usually write reviews of all books I make it at least halfway through, but there was an exception. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about a year ago, entitled Racism in Fiction: “I’m not writing a review of God’s Country — it’s not worth the effort. Everett is a facile writer, and it seemed to me that he tossed off this piece of crude and abusive nonsense with the primary purpose of expressing his feelings toward the white race.” The reason I’m now referencing it is due to the reception Everett’s recent work has gotten. James has received both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. It’s a reworking of Huckleberry Finn, told from the POV of Jim, the slave. Maybe it’s good. Maybe he’s toned down his feelings. But my local library only has digital versions of the book, and I’m not going to read it off a screen. And I’m not going to buy it.

You can read the essay dealing with God’s Country at Tapping on the Wall 

The Mangan Inheritance – Brian Moore

Moore should get credit for his clear, smooth prose, which carries the reader along effortlessly. I was carried along effortlessly in the first part, when Jamie Mangan was living in New York, married to a woman who had become a star of stage and screen. And who ditches him for a producer. But before her divorce, she gets into a fatal car accident, and Jamie winds up the sole heir to a lot of money. That’s only one inheritance in this novel. The other one (or at least the possibility of one) is discovered by Jamie while staying with his father. He comes across an old daguerreotype and is startled: he could be looking at the image of himself. The man photographed just might be the famous (and famously dissolute) 19^th century Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan. Jamie, in his younger days, had fashioned himself as a poet; that ambition had fizzled, but is now revived: could the poet’s blood of his ancestor flow in his veins? So off he goes to Ireland, to a remote and dismal village where some Mangans live. They’re a ragtag and mysterious group (they seem to be hiding some secret). Jamie is immediately smitten by a teenage vamp, and Moore serves up an explicit sex scene. Which I wished he had spared me. Actually, I had fallen out of sympathy with the proceedings. I had the feeling of being mired down in an Irish bog. I just didn’t care about Jamie’s search. I didn’t care if he was an ancestor of JCM, I didn’t care if he would start writing poetry again. If, indeed, that was where Moore was headed. But I didn’t care where he was headed. 

Open Secrets – Alice Munro

Munro won the Nobel Prize, so learned studies of her work will be coming out. I’m going to make some generalizations about this collection, which was an early mid-career work, and came out just before A Friend of My Youth. I read that book and thought it had three very good stories, but in my review I wrote that most were “baggy, unfocused and too long.” All those problems were endemic in this collection. By “baggy” I’m referring to the many loose ends left hanging about. And too many characters appear but play no real role; they amount to clutter. That’s part of being “unfocused,” a problem that also arises from the way Munro shifts about in time. We go back and forth, we skip over years (decades!). Munro doesn’t focus on a limited scale; it’s as if she wants to write a novel that covers an entire life (which helps to make the stories “too long”). And where are we left at the end? Often in a sort of limbo. The last story in the collection, and the last one I read (I skipped “The Albanian Virgin”) was “Vandals.” It begins with a letter (almost every story has letters, some quite long) and then we go back to when Bea meets Ladner and falls in love. (Is it love?; I guess so.) He’s a strange duck, but interesting. Then we switch to present time, to two other characters, Liza and her husband Warren, both young. Liza lives near the Ladner home (Ladner had died), and Bea writes a letter asking them to check on the house where Ladner (and, later, she) had lived. What Liza does is gleefully and maliciously trash the entire place (initially Warren watches, seemingly unconcerned, but later joins in). They plan to blame the destruction on vandals. Why does Liza do this – act like a maniac? Something seems to have happened between her and Ladner when she was very young. We get gauzy flashback images suggesting that. But what? Molestation? My reaction? – Alice, spit it out. Quit with the vagueness. I don’t need any explicit description, but I do need more than hints. In this collection the most concise story is “The Jack Randa Hotel,” which also has a definite ending. But I can’t say it’s the best, because I didn’t think it was anything special. Is Munro a talented writer? Yes, absolutely – I enjoyed parts, even whole sections, of every story. And some of her stories I’ve read in the past have worked entirely. But none in this collection achieved success, for the reasons I’ve given. In fact, dissatisfaction set in, which is why I skipped “Virgin.” I just had my fill of disorderly storytelling. Final note: I checked Goodreads reviews, and a two star review was brief but, I believe, makes a good summary: “I’m still not quite sure what did and didn’t happen in this book.” Same with me, bro.

A Patchwork Planet – Anne Tyler

I found this novel to be enjoyable and satisfying. Barnaby, the main character, came to life, as did the secondary ones. I pretty much liked everybody (with the exception of a few, but they were jerks). And if there’s a point being made about Life, it’s in Barnaby’s interactions with his clients at Rent-a-Back. That business provides assistance to those who need it – which is, mostly, the elderly. Clean out an attic, get a prescription, move a sofa, fix a leaky faucet. All manner of little and not-so-little jobs and errands. In some cases, he’s just providing human contact (under a flimsy premise). We get a look at old age that is, I believe, accurate and meaningful. Barnaby is invariably patient and caring (though not in a gushy way). He has an innate decency. But why is he, at age thirty, working for meager wages at such a low-level job? Couldn’t an intelligent guy do better? It all has to do with a misspent youth, which he never rises above. He never “gets his act together.” Some might classify him as a loser, but I didn’t. Maybe he found his calling at Rent-a-Back. As for Tyler’s plot, it has its strengths and its weaknesses, but the weaknesses weren’t deal-breakers. That said, I must admit that I felt sorry for what happens to Sophia at the end. She’s the thirty-five-year-old woman Barnaby gets romantically involved with. I don’t believe her mistake in judgement was so bad. But my having this opinion stems from that virtue of the novel I mentioned: I liked the lady. Last note, pertaining to that Goodreads reader who, in reading the Munros stories I reviewed above, was “not quite sure what did and didn’t happen.” Try Tyler. You won’t run into that problem.